A few months in and Soul Band gigs have started to be a little less scary. We’ve played for the old folk of Penryn on Poppy Day, the drunks of Falmouth on a very snowy December evening when anyone in heels would have snapped their ankle, and rocked out someone’s birthday do which had been invaded by all our mates. The other sax player has quit, leaving Maggie the wonderful trombonist and I to figure it all out for ourselves – and do all the solos we used to be able to hide from….
On that note, actually gigs ARE scary now as I’ve decided NOT to write down my solos but to improvise them on the spot… leading to a massive adrenalin rush as we approach the time to fire up the creative part of the brain and switch off the written music autopilot….(to call it sheet music would be flattery, it’s a load of letters scrawled on a piece of paper!)….. sometimes the creativity pays off and a sassy solo emerges, sometimes an odd note or two throws my confidence, and sometimes, as this weekend, I put too soft a reed on the sax and it gels itself to the top of the mouthpiece and nothing at all comes out…. It’s all a learning curve, and I’m loving it.
Improv is proving very hard to learn and even harder to “just do”. I have read far too much on the subject and “felt” far too little. It’s started turning into some kind of horrible maths equation that is doing my head in, and I need to leave the books behind and just play until it sounds right. For that, you don’t want to be living in a semi-detached bungalow with paper thin walls though. The only times it works are when I’ve had a glass of wine, am home alone and just play along to a CD making it up as I blow…. I badly need to rock up at rehearsal a little tipsy… but need a chauffeur for that! Or to just chillax a little….
Here’s a quick video of our latest gig – please forgive the dodgy bits, it was near the end of the gig and tiredness/madness was setting in….
Outside of Soul Band, I am mostly listening to Blues. Got a complete set of Robert Johnson for Christmas and as he inspires most of our Backroom Blues activity, it’s only right. At first I thought it stuck out like a sore thumb in my collection but am starting to recognise these ancient refrains in more recent chapters of my musical life. Also realised I had a massive Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac collection on my shelves that I’d never really dived into and am now lapping up (was madly in love with someone who covered some of their songs when I was 21…… but that’s another story).
New stuff rocking my world at the moment still includes Alabama 3, very excited about their new acoustic album out later this week – and seeing them live in Cardiff on 19 March; and I feel an urge to buy an Adele album. Not entirely sure why. Very very pleased to see Mumfords win a Brit but desperately in need of a new album as have burned Mumford-shaped patterns in my eardrums over-playing “Sigh No More” and just can’t stand it any longer…. Oh and I want to be in Sugarland if they ever need a sax player, because they seem like nice people – not so mad on the music.
Meanwhile Marc the ever-patient sax teacher is popping round once a fortnight to try and teach me stuff I neither have nor make time to practice. Except for tonight when I did spend ages playing around with bending my lips and jaw around to get all the harmonics out of the low long notes. My poor face muscles. My poor knackered reed. My poor neighbours………
